May 27, 2012: With temps slated to hit the 90 degree mark over the holiday weekend, I decided to bring some of the beautiful bounty of the garden indoors where we could enjoy it. I remembered creating a bouquet a few years ago in this same chartreuse vase that had peonies and the little stems of pink flowers from coral bells (Heuchera). When I went looking to see what I had done in that bouquet that I so fondly remembered, I discovered that I used a much more limited color palette. This time I added a 'Border Charm' yellow intersectional peony, some catmint, old German irises, bronze fennel and a bit of sprirea whose flowers haven't opened yet.
In addition to the color differences, I discovered that the flowers I used in my 2012 bouquet were blooming almost three weeks earlier than when I created the display below on June 15, 2009. Just one more sign of our accelerated spring! The pink peony is the same one in each picture but picked early below and near the end of the bloom sequence when the color is much paler above. And the Heuchera bells are from a different variety as well. The daylily above is 'Cricket' while the species or lemon lily is on the left and Dumort's in the center below. The limey green flowers are Lady's Mantle and a few flowers of Geranium cantabrigiense 'Biokovo' are peeking out here and there.
